Calumet City woman charged with concealing boyfriend's slaying

A Calumet City woman has been charged with concealing the slaying of her boyfriend this week and obstruction of justice, prosecutors said.

Desiree Cook, 37, of the 900 block of Paxton Avenue in the south suburb, is charged with concealment of a homicidal death and obstruction of justice in the death of her live-in boyfriend, Demetrius Marshall, 41, who was declared dead at 8:11 p.m. Wednesday at Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Calumet City, officials said.

Cook was ordered held in lieu of $750,000 bail in a hearing this morning before Cook County Markham Branch Court Judge Darron Bowden, said Cook County state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Tandra Simonton.

Marshall died from a gunshot wound to the face in a homicide, the Cook County medical examiner’s office determined following an autopsy Thursday.

Police went to the home Cook and Marshall shared when Cook called 911 about 7:42 p.m. Wednesday to report someone shot, prosecutors said. When police first arrived, Cook told officers that Marshall had stumbled into the home’s kitchen from the back yard and collapsed with a gunshot wound.

When confronted by police with physical evidence that seemed to contradict her story, Cook changed her story several times, at one point saying that she accidentally had shot Marshall because she thought the gun she was holding was unloaded, prosecutors said. Police found the gun believed used in the shooting in a bin in a closet in the home, and bullets in a box under a mattress, prosecutors said.